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Is there a way to change individual application volumes from the terminal? I found a way to change the master volume which is amixer -D pulse sset Master 50% but I would like to be able to change volumes for individual applications like is possible in pavucontrol. My usage would be for scripting.

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AkBKukU
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  • Depends on the application. Look into man <application> – Jacob Vlijm Feb 23 '15 at 07:03
  • I don't want to change the in application volume, I want to change the pulseaudio volume level for any application. For example, skype, which has no runtime parameters. – AkBKukU Feb 23 '15 at 15:08

2 Answers2

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I found the solution hidden in a comment on unix.stackexchange. Use pactl list sink-inputs to find your application's sink input number. Then use pactl set-sink-input-volume [sink number] [volume percent] to set the volume of your application.

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AkBKukU
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  • This one is great. I can now fade out spotify with for ((i=50;i<100;i+=1)); do; pactl set-sink-input-volume 28 $i%; sleep 0.05; done Just need to know how to get spotify sink in a more assuring way. – Błażej Michalik Jan 23 '16 at 01:23
  • I had used this command to make a script to use the pedals from an old driving wheel to control music playback volume. I put the script up here. Check out the function getSink to see a way to do it in a script. Not that the second line in it uses the variable $SINKAPP. you can substitute your process name here. – AkBKukU Feb 09 '16 at 18:21
  • Percentage no longer works. The max value is 0x10000.

    https://man.archlinux.org/man/pulse-cli-syntax.5.en#set_sink_volume_set_source_volume

     – partofthething Sep 14 '23 at 03:29
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This function easily sets the volume of any app.

function pacmd-set-app-volume() {
  local player="$1"
  local volume="$2"
  firstPlayerSinkIndex="$(pacmd list-sink-inputs | awk '/index:|application.name |application.process.binary / {print $0};' | grep -iB 1 "$player" | awk '/index:/ {print $2; exit}')"  # get specific app sink
  [[ $firstPlayerSinkIndex ]] && pacmd set-sink-input-volume "$firstPlayerSinkIndex" "$((volume*65536/100))" # 100% → 65536
}

Could be added to .bashrc/.zshrc.

Usage:

pacmd-set-app-volume <loosly_app_name> <volume_percentage>

For e.g.:

pacmd-set-app-volume "MPV Media Player" 55  # Or "mpv" "75"
Pablo Bianchi
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